San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Alvin Duskin: Led creative crusade against high-rises
Many political activists are dour crusaders, pushing their cause with a self-righteous air.
And then there was Alvin Duskin.
A native San Franciscan who made big money in the late 1960s and early 1970s by selling short dresses, Duskin led one of the most unorthodox political campaigns the city has ever seen — a 1971 initiative to ban all new buildings above 72 feet unless voters approved them in advance.
The initiative lost, but not before sparking the public imagination through such tactics as the distribution of 50,000 copies of the “Vote on High-Rise Coloring Book.” The simplicity of the message also crystallized the local debate over growth, culminating in a successful 1985 proposition that placed limits on how much office space can be built in any given year.
By then, Duskin had left the dress business and embarked on producing wind turbines to generate natural energy. He died on July 25 at the age of 90 at his home in Tomales.
“He worked to illuminate people, but also to get their attention,” said Sue Hestor, an attorney who has been active in growth-related issues ever since Duskin hired her to staff the 1971 campaign. “People like me get a bit intense. Alvin had a knack for keeping a good humor and winning people over.”
Even people who were on the opposite side of issues had a bemused admiration for Duskin and his methods.
“I have to give him credit,” Mark Buell said. Now chair of the board of the Presidio Trust and the city’s Recreation and Park Commission, Buell was on the opposing side of the height battles. “He was really clever.” Duskin grew up in the Portola district, the son of parents who had an apparel factory, and attended Stanford University and San Francisco State University before going into the clothing business for himself. His factory near Mission Creek was on the same block as the offices of then-young Rolling Stone magazine.
His business breakthrough came with the realization, he later said, that adding 10 inches to a snug knit sweater would turn it into a snug mini-dress that sold for twice as much. Add peace signs, and you had what the New York Times then described as “the fastest-selling dress in history.”
It was around this time that he met Sara Urquhart, who had moved west from New York to open a branch of a clothing boutique in Ghirardelli Square and decided to stay. They married soon afterward.
“I was struck by his intelligence, and his love for the outdoors — we started dirt-biking together,” Sara Duskin recalled this month. “He wasn’t that keen to be known as the ‘dress guy.’ ”
Instead, for several years, he became a local political force.
First, friends stirred his interest in battling a Texas developer’s plan to turn Alcatraz into a tourist attraction with a replica of the Apollo 8 moon rocket. He put up money for full-page newspaper ads and — after 8,000 readers clipped out and sent in coupons making their displeasure known —the development scheme collapsed.
Meanwhile, Financial District towers were popping up while boosters touted the idea that this city should become a corporate powerhouse like Manhattan. Duskin took out another fullpage ad — this one telling readers: “You can help decide if our city will become a skyline of tombstones.”
The ad was on behalf of Proposition T, which sought to limit new buildings to 72 feet. The concept was audacious; so was the oversize coloring book with 16 artists illustrating pages that posed such questions as “The Chamber of Commerce says ‘We need more high rise hotels for the tourists.’ But ... will any tourists come here when they can’t see the bay?”
There also were neighborhood meetings and debates, settings where Duskin thrived. Buell worked for the Chamber of Commerce at the time, and would be assigned to face off against Duskin in those formats — never an easy task.
“He was an affable debater, and he was really clever,” Buell said. He was not, however, the type of activist who held a grudge once sparring ended. “There are activists who see development and developers as evil. Alan wasn’t like that. He was a regular guy.”
The campaign lost, as did a 1972 sequel with height caps set at 160 feet. But City Hall was spooked; by the end of 1972, planners had released a groundbreaking urban design plan that controlled where towers could rise.
“In any environmental crusade, you always go for more than you think you’re going to get,” he shrugged in 2009, looking back. “On the way to ‘losing,’ they downzoned all those neighborhoods.”
After an unsuccessful and tedious race for the Board of Supervisors — “he’d tell me, ‘I can’t lie to the people in the city that I love’,” Sara recalled — Duskin shifted his interest to environmental causes at a statewide and even global scale. The couple moved from North Beach to the Richmond District, where they raised their family. Eventually, children grown, they bought a small house in Bolinas with a large garden.
During that 2009 lunch, Duskin showed no remorse at leaving local politics behind: “There comes a time when you get stale on issues.” He did, however, suggest that the fervent campaign against “Manhattanization” had been simplistic.
“We really didn’t understand the consequences of mindless suburban sprawl,” Duskin said. “The environmental and psychological damage of spreading out like that is so severe ... the problem for planners is to raise the city’s density without creating a destructive environment.”
Duskin is survived by his wife, Sara; his children Marcus, Laura, Sarah, Ceres, David and Zoe; and 12 grandchildren. In lieu of a memorial, he asked that friends honor him “by taking action to move the world forward.”